Course Blog for LMST345 Ringling College of Art

We finish the semester with a laugh, or at least I hope so. This week I have asked you to listen to the original radio version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or alternatively, to some Firesign Theater, the masters of absurdist specualtive audio. As with the other genres we have studied this semester, reading comic uses of genre codes serves as an excellent way to become more aware of those codes, their limits and often their absurdist qualities. This week's featured film is Idiocracy an increasingly popular cult favorite that uses tropes of science fiction and the rhetorical figure of exaggeration to make visible a number of the inherent contradictions and fallacies of our current cultural assumptions. This highlights one of the larger roles that science fiction plays in our society and reminds us that science fiction is really never about the future but always about the present.The recent television series Braindead, available for streaming is also an excellent near future sci-fi parody of current politics.

Next week I will begin meeting you indivdiually for your final reviews. Please remember to post on your blog any responses to works you have read this semester. Be sure to complete the online course evaluation. Several of you have requested to do your final review at the end of this week's class, make sure you have everything posted to your blog by Sunday evening and make sure I have an active link to your blog on the course blog page.Here is a link to the assignment page in the course syllabus.

This week we are considering the way in which the mainstream of literary writing has embraced the impulse of speculative fiction and sometimes its genre codes and markers as well. Its the quality of writing that makes such works literary, but often these works provide many unexpected pleasures because they are free of the expectations associated with specific genre. There are two basic types of literary speculation, one in which the writer is writing within the codes of genre but has literary pretensions or at least a literary result. This writer is usually associated with the genre but creates work that crosses over into the literary mainstream. Such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, or William Gibson are writers of this type. The second type is when the writer is usually associated with mainstream literary work but chooses to use some of the tropes or codes of specualtive genre in a work. Such writers might include Doris Lessing, Michael Chabon or Margaret Atwood. Atwood's novel, Oryx and Crake is this week's spotlight novel. In class we will read some short fiction by Italo Calvino and Stanislaw Lem, who in part, defy even the two categories I have just put forward. Next week will be our last general class session when we will be discussing satirical science fiction, and the future of speculation.Here a link to this week's assignment on the syllabus.

﻿﻿ ﻿﻿﻿ ﻿ Imagining a future relies on understanding and making use of one's placement in the present. Although there have always been individual authors who picked away at the edges of the genre, or even sometimes at its center, from marginalized positions of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or residency in the third world, our ideas of what constitutes tomorrow have often been based on non-inclusive assumptions. Over the last two decades the readership and the authorship of science fiction has become more diverse. This week we inquire into the effects of that increased inclusion. Has science fiction changed as it has become more diverse? Have the assumptions that have governed the creation of science fiction conventions changed as well? Have the conventions or tropes of science fiction shifted to accommodate a more diverse audience?This week the suggested novel is the first of series of works by Octavia Butler in her Xenogenesis novels and is entitled Dawn. In class we will read "Bloodchild," a short story by Octavia Butler.Here is the link to the week's assignment on the syllabus.

The recommended reading for this week is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a classic of cyberpunk. Alternatively you might read Neuromancer by William Gibson or if you need something shorter, you might try Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic." Cyperpunk ficition often takes place in "cyberspace," a term invented by Gibson. It also features characters whose bodies are modified or enhanced by mechanical means, cyborgs, in other words. The cyperpunk heroine is one of the character types of this ficiton that has become ubiquitous in speculative fiction generally; she is the alpha female, often dressed in black, body modified with armaments or weapons, working as a bodyguard. She is the perfect prototype for the new woman of the 21st century and we now see her in popular storytelling of all types, such as the best seller, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo. She remains a staple of William Gibson's fiction where she made her debut, although she is no longer a character of the future but a character of the present just as his novels are no longer science fiction but mainstream.We will also consider some of the variants of cyperpunk like Steam Punk and Diesel Punk. There is a list of Steam Punk novels on the syllabus page. A good place to start might be The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers or the Victorian supernatural romance novel, Soulless by Gail Carriger.Here is a link to this week's assignment on the syllabus.

Image from the play, Rossum's Universal Robots, from the novel by the Czech author of speculative fiction, Karel Capek, in which the word robot makes its first appearance.

By the 1960s, writers and fans of science fiction were getting a taste of legitimacy as the genre drew serious consideration from both social commentators and literary critics . Writers like Ray Bradbury, Isacc Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Kurt Vonnegut emerged from science fiction into the mainstream of literary conversation. Novels and stories became increasingly less about high adventure and space opera and more about the application of modern literary technique to speculative storytelling. Science fiction began to be about issues in anthropology, psychology, biology and sociology as much as problems in physics and engineering. Writers from the space opera and military science fiction sub-genres like Robert Heinlein begun to emphasize social or political speculation admidst the romantic conventions of genre storytelling. Some writers like Philip K. Dick became increasingly paranoid and dystopian in profound opposition to the heroic idealism of magazine science fiction of the 1940s and 1950s. Some writers like Brian Aldiss and others of the British New Wave movement became more formally experimental. All these sub-groups began to influence each other and works evolved that hybridized genre conventions. This week we are looking at the way science fiction has become the fiction of ideas. The recommended reading for this week is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursulla K. LeGuinn Another recommended text is Samuel R. Delaney's Babel 17, a short novel that is full of interesting ideas about language and culture. There are a number of other alternate choices on the course resource page.Here is a link to this week's page on the course syllabus with a list of alternate choices.Next week we will be discussing Cyberpunk and Steam Punk.

Space Opera is the sub-genre of science fiction that was originally developed from the high adventure tales of the 19th century, especially the pulp western and sea story. Using the conventions of these genres transplanted into outer space settings, this form of science fiction dominated the types of stories published in pulp science fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. Space Opera was generally staged in large scale societies and across galactic distances. There are intergalatic empires, space pirates, ray guns, and faster-than-light spaceships. The plots and dialogue are often melodramatic and the prose purple, but these large canvas high adventures are still often the way fans first encounter the genre. This was true for the first wave of science fiction fans in the 1920s and 1930s and it is still true today for fans who first experience science fiction through space operas like Star Wars or Serenity.By the 1940s, space opera was giving way to science fiction with more serious focus on future technologies, character development, and the fiction of ideas.One of this week's suggested novel is Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, a romantic adventure on another planet. Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the best writers of space opera and she is still adding to her long-running story of the Miles Vorkosigan family which remains quite compelling in its adventure and social complication.The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, one of the relatively unknown and terribly underread classics of Science Fiction is the alternate choice. In this novel Bester creates one of the most memorable anti-heroes of science fiction, Gully Foyle, who is about as nasty and impossible a hero as you will find anywhere. Essentially a retellling of The Count of Monte Christo, the 19th century novel of high adventure, this work captures all the excitement of space opera with deeper development of ideas and characterization.The other main force in 1950s Science Fiction was fiction that dealt with the possible realities of interplanetary exploration, especially within the solar system. Interest in human exploration of the planets in our solar system has recently been renewed. The novel The Martian by Andy Weir and the subsequent movie of the same name is an example of how those speculations, which adhere closely to scientific fact, are being dramatized for today's audiences.y

There has been a revival in space opera and an interest in creating high adventure science fiction that makes the most of the expansive possiblities of super scale societies as it also makes use of the conventions derived from the western or the sea story. Joss Whedon's Serenity or Firefly series is space opera of this type. More recently the sapce opera that begins locally and enlarges cosmically is well-represented by the Wachowski siblings' Jupiter Ascending.The English writer Alastair Reynolds is particularly adept at this in his short stories and his large canvas novels about Revelation Space. The SciFi Channel has been recently exploring this type of science fiction with The Expanse a series taken from the novels by James S.A. Corey, the pen name of the team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. This series combine aspects of the noir detective story with interplanetary adventure.If you are interested in the fusion of space opera and romance novel conventions consider some of the work by Catherine Asaro. Here is a link to the syllabus assignment for this week including a list of alternate readings.As for the issues of writing strong women for television and movies these remarks by Joss Whedon are very relevant and on the mark:http://www.upworthy.com/48-reporters-asked-this-guy-the-same-dumb-question-about-women-his-response-absolutely-perfect?c=fea

The focus of this week's class is new urban fantasy, the type of fantasy that has evolved in the post-Tolkien period and especially the type of literary fantasy that has evolved since the 1970s. While many of the codes of fantasy became the foundation for endless sword and sorcery trilogies, tetraologies, septologies, etc., mythic fiction, archetypal storytelling, began to blend the fantastic with the mundane, the extraordinary with the ordinary. Writers of contemporary urban fantasy took some of their inspiration from such earlier writers of the fantastic such as James Branch Cabell and Charles G. Finney. Magic Realism which was an idea that emerged from the reading of Latin American Fiction was also an influence. Gabriel Garcia Marquez who is associated with bringing Magic Realilsm into epic form also brought this narrative approach into film. Magic Realism in film is now fairly widespread and is at the stylistic center of such films as Big Fish and Pan's Labyrynth.

Not entirely distinct, magic realism and contemporary fantasy, in part. overlap sharing a certain similarity of narrative effect. John Crowley's Little, Big together with John Barth's, Giles Goat Boy were two major contemporary novels to represent urban fantasy at an epic scale. The Canadian writer Charles de Lint has also created a body of work that reminds us that myth and archetypal experience can be important ways in which to experience and understand contemporary reality. Neil Gaiman, who has become one of our most popular living authors, has often represented traditional mythological perspectives in the context of everyday life. In his stories frequently there is a very thin membrane between reality and the lands of fairy and his protagonists are frequently crossing that borderline. This week we will look at the way Gaiman questions assumptions and deflates various forms of hierarchical thinking in his work. This week's featured novel is Neil Gaiman's Ananzi Boys, one of his best written stories. Alternatively, you could read his most recent short novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.As a featured film for this week, I suggest watching M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.Here is a link to the assignment as described on the course syllabus.

This week we are considering the fantasy story directed to an audience of children or young adults as an instrument through which to teach personal and cultural values. These are narratives of application meant not just to entertain but to instruct and to enlighten. The epic tale of Harry Potter is certainly the most well known example of this type of story for most young people today, and if you haven't read Harry Potter, here is your chance. For those who are interested in values education that is somewhat more age appropriate, the recommended work to read this week is Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, a compelling tale set in an mysterious Edwardian world that features a deadly competition in magic.

Alternatively you are welcome to read a story built around students at an elite magical college where many of the students have read the Harry Potter books and are magicians the way you are art students. The book is called The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

You might also consider reading the very interesting and deeply considered alternate worlds tale, The Golden Compass the first book in a trilogy by Phillip Pullman. In this work Pullman attempts to construct a framework in which to demonstrate humanist moral values while simultaneous mounting a serious critique of organized religions. Pullman's story is created as a sort of anti-Narnia and certainly proceeds from different assumptions than those that underlie the work of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis.

A fourth option is the series of fantasy stories more in the direct line of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynn Jones, the author of Howl's Moving Castle.

Tolkien once defended fantasy literature from charges of being "escapist" by explaining that readers "escaped" into fantasy literature the way prisoners "escaped" from jail. Tolkien saw the genre we now call fantasy literature as a necessary antidote to modern life. Tolkien's own works were to help propel the genre of fantasy into wider acceptance and popularity. At the same time, they helped to freeze elements of the genre code into place while creating expectations of the genre (the "trilogy" for example) that hadn't existed before. In this week's class we will consider the genre code for fantasy and examine some of the elements, such as the hero's quest, that have come to dominate perception of works of "High Fantasy."

This week's reading assignment is to read a fantasy classic. We will focus on JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, and will generally discuss fantasy as a genre, the myth of the hero and the nature of archetypal storytelling. We will discuss The Lord of the Rings both books and movie. There are a number of other fantasy classics available for reading on the course resource page. Pick one and read it.Click Here to Go to the First Animated version of the Hobbit by Gene Deitch.

The Illustration at the right is from Alice in Wonderland by Mervyn Peake, fantasy author and illustrator. The first volume of his fantasy trilogy about Gormenghast is available to read on the course resource page. It is an interesting alternative to reading Tolkien this week. There is also the wonderful and unexpected fantasy novel by Hope Mirlees called Lud in the Mist. Consult the syllabus for more choices.If you are interested in an epic fantasy story written from a female point of view you might want to consider The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley who revisits the tradition of Arthurian Romance to tell a story founded in a recreated world of female mysticism and matriarchical power. This long novel follows nicely on our conversation about witches last week.click here to go directly to the syllabus assignment for this week

This week we will be discussing the topic of witches and female archetypes in speculative fiction. The featured novel for this week is Aunt Mariah by Diana Wynne Jones. This is a reasonably short novel that has a very interesting version of the archetypal war between men and women. Alternatively you might like to read Equal Rites, the third volume of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and a reasonable first book to read in the series if you haven't read any others.A book that takes a sort of witches approach to the Arthurian legend is The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley which looks at some of the mystic legends that underpin the idea of witches. This is a long novel but a master work of mythic feminism. In class we may read several fairy tales both traditional and contemporary and look towards ways to develop better responses to the reading of them. This week's focus will be on improving written responses. Please bring your notebook computer to class. Next class we will begin reading and talking about Fantasy Fiction. The featured text for next week is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Link to this week's assignment on the syllabus

This week we will be discussing recent trends in the horror genre and among the most influential, in my view, is what some call The New Weird. The term evokes the old Weird Tales Magazine, a pulp magazine in which a range of stories appeared dramatizing uncanny experience, tales of the monstrous, or experiences with the supernatural. There was an easy mixing of genre in this publication with little attention to whether any individual work would have been considered horror, science fiction or fantasy. Some works appearing there would have elements of all three. The New Weird seems to me to imply something of an emphasis on the horrific or uncanny, while "slipstream" a similar term that evolved in roughly the same time period, seemed to place something of an emphasis on the science fiction elements of the story. Both terms reflect interests that were self-consciously literary and whose projects tended to dissolve barriers between genre. While based in genre, works of these types often use surreal and anti-real strategies and don't necessarily rely on the storytelling conventions of realistic fiction. Bizarro fiction, a literary based movement with a similar orientation against the conventions of realistic storytelling also emerges in roughly the same time period, especially the years 2007-2008 when these terms become more widely discussed.

The most prominent writer described as embodying The New Weird is the English novelist, China Miéville. King Rat, his first novel which takes place in the old school dub step culture of London is the featured work for this week, Three Moments of an Explosion which is a collection of shorter work is a good alternative. Another recent novel of his, Railsea, a reimagining of Moby Dick with steam trains and giant moles. Perdido Street Station, a longer novel is considered one of the major works of The New Weird.In film, The New Weird might in someways be best represented by Mumblegore, an independent horror genre that parallels many of the same production techniques and approaches as Mumblecore films. The production values include micro-budgets, unknown actors and improvised dialogue.

The movie, Cabin in the Woods, with its over-the-top deployment of every genre element it can muster is this week's featured movie. V/H/S (2012), an anthology film from several directors associated with the Mumblegore movement, is an interesting alternative choice. The old school weird movie Freaks by Tod Browning is also highly recommended.There are a number of other books and films listed on the course syllabus for this week that suggest possible new directions for the genre of horror. We will discuss some of those in specific and the future of horror in general when we meet in class.In the writing assignment for this week I would like you to create a blog post that discusses what you read for the topic of the New Weird and what you think other future trends in the genre of horror might be and why that trend is developing.

This week we are considering the sub-genres of J-Horror and K-horror as well as supernatural tales from South Asian cinema. This is a type of storytelling often with its roots in traditional ghost stories. The novels and films featured this week often embody a sense of the emptiness of contemporary life, representing a world in which the protagonists are having a great deal of trouble finding their place. A sense of existential crisis pervades these stories, a crisis not only shared among the central characters but a crisis in the fabric of the reality they inhabit.

The reading for this week is Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. This novel is a ghost story in the manner of traditional Japanese ghost stories in which ghosts are material phenomena, real and tangible in this world, not spectral. It's this sort of ghost that inhabits J-horror and is in part developed out of traditional dramatic forms like the puppet theater, or the Noh theater tradition. The style of these traditional types of ghost stories is well represented in the movie, Kwaidan, which is one of the suggested films for this week. Alternatively, you may want to read Kwaidan, the collection of traditional ghost stories or read the novel on which the movie Battle Royale is based by Koshun Takami.

Double Page spread from the third volume of the Battle Royale Manga

The featured movie for this week is Audition by Takashi Miike. The violence in this film is very graphic, you might want to consider any of the alternatives listed on the syllabus.You can see more details on this week's assignment on the assignment page for this week on the syllabus here.

Over the last hundred and fifty years the representation of the vampire has shifted from merciless monster of the evil dead, through suave continental lover, to troubled boyfriend from a dysfunctional family. What makes vampires so sexy? Is it because they want something more than sex? Has the vampire become the representation of a male who really understands women and will listen to what they want? What's with all the high school girl vampires these days? The Vampire seems to have completely evolved into a gender neutral concept.

Reading Assignment: This week's featured novel, Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, transformed and familiarized the concept of the vampire and radically altered the context of the vampire story.

If you have read Anne Rice or you wish to sample the vampires of the moment, alternatively, you can try reading Vampire Academy, the first work in two series of books and a recent film based in the vampire world of Richelle Mead. These are the featured works we are discussing this week along with a number of vampire movies.

The contemporary vampire tale has become a means of exploring a relationship with a complex and contradictory character, revitalizing the plot of forbidden love. In your reading for the week what pairs of ideas or representations does the author place in opposition to one another? Does the author seem to privilege one set of ideas or values over the other? What set of values does the vampire represent? Are those the dominant or privileged ideas advanced in the work? How does the story you read embody larger arguments about values in human society? Does the work seem to express a simple morality on the surface, but a more complex moral environment once one considers the issues at more depth? What values does the work really seem to portray?

This week's required movie is Only Lovers Left Alive directed by Jim Jarmusch or alternatively, Neil Jordan's Byzantium which we will be seeing a selection from in class. Please check the course resources page and the syllabus for alternative texts.

If you have not yet created your blog and/or sent me the url for it so I can link it to this course blog, please do so now.

The image above is by Edvard Munch is often called "The Vampire" because of a critic who saw that theme in the work. But Munch's title for the work was "Love and Pain," the woman comforting the man whose head she cradles, not sucking his blood.

Next week we will talk about J-Horror, the various themes of horror and macabre events that we associate with storytelling from Japan, especially the recent wave of popular horror films. The featured work is a contemporary ghost story by Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's major writers, entitled A Wild Sheep Chase. The recommended alternative choice is Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn. Another possible book to read might be Battle Royale: The Novel by Koushun Takami.

The Monster Gazes Into a Pool from Lynd Ward's illustrations for Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is a text that is frequently used to start a discussion of speculative fiction. It is often pointed to as the first "science fiction" novel, a category that is invented some hundred years after the novel was published. It is also considered a significant work of "gothic" fiction. The name "Frankenstein" is still associated with the genre of horror as every Halloween, thousands of children quite readily attempt to personify and embody the monster of Mary Shelley's imagination. What better place to start our own perambulation through speculative fiction, so I would like to request that you read as much of the novel as you can before we meet for the first time on Thursday morning.Reading Assignment: Read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You can access an electronic version of the text on the course resource page which is linked here and in the box in the upper right of this page. To access the course resources use your Ringling username and password.In class this week we will discuss Frankenstein, the beginnings of horror fiction, the formulations of the gothic and the nature of the sublime. You may wish to attend class before attempting this week's written assignment.Writing Assignment: Post a response (approx. 250 - 350 wds.) on your blog page discuss some of the "gothic" aspects of Frankenstein or whatever text you read for this week. If you have read Frankenstein before please choose from among the alternate texts for something to read for this week.During the semester I will expect you to read at least 7 novels or long reads, this can count as one of them. To see further what is required in this course and what will undertake please click on the link at the right to go to the course syllabus. I will update you during our first class meeting. The general requirement for the class is that you read each week and write about what you have read.

Please bring your notebook computers or tablet to class; they will be used for in-class reading and writing. Your writings will be required to be posted on your own class blog which I will link to this page. You should set up a blog for this class on Blogger or similar blogging network and send me the url for your blog as soon as possible. Remember to include in your email the link to your blog and indicate which course you have signed up for since all my courses have blogs.Some readings and other materials will be available on the Course Resource Page which is linked to this page in the Course Links box. You will prompted to enter your Ringling username and password to enter the Resource area. You will find a copy of a text of Frankenstein there as well.You may wish to write about Frankenstein before coming to the first class, but you may wait to do so until you understand more about the course. You can always revise your post at any time. Most students who take this course enjoy the readings and find they can manage the course load within the demands of their schedule. Individualized reading programs are readily constructed for students who need one. If you have issues that effect your ability to read or write please talk to me as soon as possible. See you in class..Dr. Steiling

You should have an appointment time to meet with me this week or during exam week for your individual review. If you do not have an appointment, please email me for one right away. Please post all your blog entries and complete the online course evaluation before coming for your conference. Here is a link to the syllabus assignment for this week.

This week we are discussing the short novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. The sub-genre for this story might be considered either zombie or vampire, it lies somewhat in between the two. It is one of the origin stories for the zombie genre and a compelling read. The alternate text is Monster Island which is an internet novel. There is a link to this text which is available on the internet as a blogged novel, on the course syllabus. If you are seeking a literary version of the undead I recommend Colson Whitehead"s novel of a zombie apocalypse, Zone One.Zombies, unlike vampires, werewolves, and a bevy of other monster types, really have few literary antecedants. There are some popular journalistic, folkloric and anthropologic accounts of zombies, usually of the type associated with the practice of "voodoo" in the Carribean. These type of zombie tales are some of the earliest to make their way into the cinema, such as the 1932 film, White Zombie. In this conceptualization of the Zombie, the zombie is either a reanimated corpse or a living human being brought under the power of a powerful Voudun shaman or sorceror, usually by the use of psychoactive chemicals or secret magic.

By the late 1960s the zombie in its contemporary shape makes its appearance in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Various incarnations since envision the willless zombie as not under the control of an individual, but rather part of a mass event where the dead are reanimated and seek to feast on the living.

How do the rules for zombies expressed in the work you read for this week embody the rules for zombies generally? Just what is the metaphor being presented by the figure of the zombie? Moreover, what can we make of the zombie as it has become a fixture in contemporary popular culture; why have zombies become so popular?

This week we are reading a novel by Brandon Sanderson, one of the current generation's better fantasy writers. The novel is Warbreaker and besides being built on the usual conventions of the genre, many conventions being reversed or surprisingly twisted, it also makes use of structures and motifs that seem perfect for gaming, as if the novel is also being constructed as a gaming platform. We want to take a look this week at the interrelationship between gaming and the fantasy genre, the ways in which gaming has affected the development of new conventions in fantasy and how the fantasy novel as world maker is expanding genre elements across media.

We will also be looking at the concept of the "heterotopic" mirror and the nature of fantasy in its current cultural context. Please remember to bring your blog up to date this week, I will be submitting mid-term grades on the weekend before class.